Russian academic warns of negative consequences in reforming UN

The UN never fulfilled its main objective - constraint toward peace, said Russian Academy of Sciences member Sergey Rogov at a roundtable discussion entitled 'The future of the UN: possibility of reform' on May 15. He said that there was nothing unusual about the fact that the UN could not prevent the US from going to war with Iraq. In the years of the Cold War two superpowers dictated their will to the UN - the US and Russia, and now only the US dictates. Rogov is confident that the role of the UN will hardly increase in the near future. 'There may be negative consequences from reforming the UN. If the US will be the only country with a veto, then it will entirely stop considering questions with other nations. Now there is still the possibility of dialogue,' he said.